The significance of ions contributing to salinity for species in environments affected by multiple salts
- Plant niches to soil ion composition -
Our research seeks to improve our understanding of plant-soil relationships, including the significance of physiological plant adaptations, and to advance our understanding of community ecology in environments impacted by multiple salt types
project start: 2022
[manuscript accepted]
Project part a): Halophytic vegetation occurs along the coasts and in the arid interiors of continents. Its ecosystem functions, species composition, and plant ecological niches are strongly shaped by salinity, the concentration of salts in the soil. While it is well known that species niches differ to salinity, we have a limited understanding of how they differ along gradients of salt chemical composition.
Despite their importance in extreme edaphic environments, few studies quantified fine-scale edaphic factors in niche ecology or have explored how species' ecological niches respond to ion composition in environments impacted by multiple salt types. We analyzed ecological niches of species in saline environments based on the hypothesis that in salt-affected habitats, ions contributing to salinity are important determinants of plant species distribution and co-determine niche differentiation of plant species. We argue that the importance of ions and elements will differ for single species and species with (halophytes) and without (associated species) physiological adaptations to saline soils and explore how niches overlap in their environmental space.
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[manuscript in preparation]
Project part b): Understanding the drivers of species richness at large geographical scales is crucial for capturing all factors that influence diversity at the local level, which is particularly important for biodiversity conservation. At the regional level, landscape heterogeneity and edaphic characteristics drive plant species diversity. We focussed on the link between edaphic variation and variance in plant species richness and hypothesized that (a) the topsoil layer affecting species growth, i.e., the main root zone of the studied vegetation, shows recurring variation and, thus, could be classified into types using soil chemical factors, (b) species richness differs between the defined topsoil types, and (c) specific ions drive the variance in species richness. To account for decreasing species richness with increasing salinity and the different abilities of plants to cope with salt stress, we specifically looked at the numerical and proportional richness of all species as well as of halophytes and associated species separately.
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Lab: Vegetation Science Group, Masaryk University
Cooperation partner: Mirjana Ćuk, Jiří Danihelka, Daniel Dítě, Zuzana Dítě, Michal Pavonič, Zdenka Preislerová, Helena Prokešová, Hans Georg Stroh,Tibor Toth, Viktoria Wagner & Milan Chytrý
Cooperation partner: Mirjana Ćuk, Jiří Danihelka, Daniel Dítě, Zuzana Dítě, Michal Pavonič, Zdenka Preislerová, Helena Prokešová, Hans Georg Stroh,Tibor Toth, Viktoria Wagner & Milan Chytrý
Talks:
- Ekologie 2022, Brno (Czech Republic): Niches of Pannonian halophytes differ by salt types
- Monday Seminars 2022, Institute of Botany of The Czech Academy of Sciences (Třeboň) Salt-affected vegetation in Europe
- Botanical seminar 2023, Institute for Botany and Zoologu, Masaryk University (Brno) Unravel salinity: vegetation patterns and species niches across coastal and inland salt-affected habitats
Publications:
- Pätsch R., Midolo G., Dítě Z., Dítě, D., Wagner, V., Pavonič, M., Danihelka, J., Preislerová Z., Ćuk M., Stroh H.G., Tóth T., Chytrá H., Chytrý M. (accpeted) Beyond salinity: plants show divergent responses to soil ion composition, Global Evology and Biogeography